- Greg

Newspapers will remain a source of information in geographic and demographic areas where there is access to new communication tools but lack of awareness of their multiple uses. However, news channels have made the task of reporters and journalists more challenging. They are confronted with the challenge to present news and views, article and analyses, stories and interviews which reflect the expertise in “exclusive content engineering,” i. e., in the morning, a week after or a month or two month after the story is carried by news channels, the newspapers and magazines present something new, something different and something that has not been presented or discussed. This is what I see missing in most of the news stories and articles in the newspapers.

Thanks to social media, a large number of outstanding research scholars who did not have the access to or acceptability of the newspapers editors or news channels owners are now have access to serious readers and net surfers. Nobody expects a story like “How to save Newspapers” from newspaper owners, reporters and journalists. Only Greg can do that and that also on or through social media as an outstanding media expert. Now professionally and technically, an ordinary person like me also knows what is going on in media.

What newspapers have to worry about is neither circulation nor ad revenue. What they have to worry about is their “content collection and presentation technique” based on indepth research. If they do not adjust themselves to the need of the time to focus on news gathering and views engineering techniques, they will find themselves in BIG…BIG…BIG trouble.

Thanks for your input.

- Greg

The point is that prior to 1900, Journalism was much more rather than less political or targeted than it has been for the last century. As publishers decided to become more objective to attract a more general audience, there was a slow, but growing alienation from readers.

There are three possible reactions to any story. The reader agrees, disagrees, or thinks the publication was too spineless to take a position. Two of those three outcomes breeds reader alienation.

Somehow, the reader must have the ability to seamlessly choose what he or she is interested in reading about. Perhaps a setup routine sets a small file of metatags that mirrors reader interest. Those tags then access a database that produces an individualized newspaper for each reader.

The advertiser already has the ability to define his reader more acutely than ever before. Perhaps publishers need to get out of the selling advertising in specific publication and instead sell advertising to groups of readers with matching characteristics.

Perhaps the distribution piece of the puzzle is purchased from portal gateways or using certain pieces of hardware to certain applications that are hardware nonspecific.

In any event, the notion that a general audience model can succeed is guaranteed to fail. People must be treated as individuals. The technology will give us the ability to accomplish a media that isn’t hated by two out of three readers by definition.

There’s a lot of truth to what you say, but as a journalist you can take solace in the fact that a professional journalist’s output is worth 10-20 times what social media is. Moreover, that ration can be increase further by using social components to generate discussion (even if it’s crap discussion).

So, if nothing else, you can rest assured that Journalist’s work still has real and even measurable value.

- Greg

Phrases like “low cost inventory” bother me.

Crap is crap, even if you use three words to describe it. Much reader-generated commentary is crap. OK, I’m a journalist but it bothers me to see tendentious nonsense and rants published alongside serious well researched stuff. And no, I don’t have an answer either. We need a better way of separating “fact” from opinion and its demented cousin rant.

This contribution may be crap too, in which case someone should make a professional editorial decision to “spike” it.

Nevertheless, the point remains: it’s not (just) the business model. Newspapers (and evening TV news) have been losing audience for decades as people have more and more choices — and have become more and more cynical about the institutions that newspapers have traditionally covered. Indeed, it’s partly the success of newspapers in showing up the corruption in politics (Spiro “nattering nabobs of negativism” Agnew’s paper bags of cash, Abscam, Nixon’s Watergate), and the military (Pentagon papers and $100 hammers) and in business and the church — that have decreased the public’s engagement in these institutions and therefore their interest in reading about them.

Also, we moved to the suburbs and then from one town to another — breaking our interest in local news — and entering our houses through garage doors with remote controls so we never have to get out of our car where we might speak to neighbors– breaking down our connection to our neighbors…

It’s true that realtor.com, cars.com, ebay.com, craigslist.org did help kill classifieds, and Walmart, Kmart and online shopping helped kill display advertising as department stores lost their purpose, while newspapers’ resistance to dealmaking led grocery stores to switch their ads from newspapers to mailed Advo stuff in the 1980s, long before the Web.

Newspapers really failed to compete on nearly every front! And have resisted to the end the idea that people might not want what they have to offer any more. Am I pessimistic about their chances? Not really, since almost every medium has found a niche for itself after the new media arrived. It just may take another decade for its new shape–both content and business model– to emerge.

Very true. And you’re right, many papers have lost their commitment to excellence.

- Greg

Thanks for sharing your perspective.

- Greg